Questionable Tactics by GOP by Thom Hartmann

in Florida’s counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots – fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking — the results seem to contain substantial anomalies.

In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.

In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.

The pattern repeats over and over again – but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.

Those faulty exit polls were sabotage=The Hill.com= by Dick Morris

Exit polls are almost never wrong. … So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. … But this Tuesday, the networks did get the exit polls wrong. Not just some of them. They got all of the Bush states wrong.

To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible. It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent and invites speculation that more than honest error was at play here. …

At the very least, the exit pollsters should have to explain, in public, how they were so wrong. Since their polls, if biased or cooked, represented an attempt to use the public airwaves to reduce voter turnout, they should have to explain their errors in a very public and perhaps official forum.

This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play.

Note that the infamous Dick Morris is suggesting that Dems rigged the infallible Exit Polls. mjh

How can we process billions of ATM, credit card, debit card and other financial transactions every single day with a miniscule error rate and not be able to do the same when it matters most to the entire nation? Because voting machines are a business and every business wants to get things done as cheaply as possible. mjh

NewsNet5.com – Politics – Computer Glitch Gives Bush 3,893 Extra Votes

Computer Glitch Gives Bush 3,893 Extra Votes

Software flaw found in Florida vote machines

Software flaw found in Florida vote machines

Wired News: Computer Loses 4,500 Votes

Computer Loses 4,500 Votes

Politics News Article | Reuters.com

It will not be an easy task. Defeated in the presidential election, the party that dominated U.S. politics from the 1930s until the 1990s also lost ground in both chambers of Congress and the Republicans retained control of most of the state governorships.

“I think this is a realigning election. The Democrats are going to have to get used to permanent minority status for a generation or two,” said Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. …

In many ways, the Democrats have become a coalition of minorities — blacks, homosexuals, Jews, the unmarried and the unreligious. Bush’s political strategist Karl Rove characterized the typical Democrat as “somebody with a doctorate … people who imbibed the values of the sixties and seventies and stuck with them.”

Yeah, those crazy sixties ideas like equality, justice, peace, love — what bunch of looney liberals! And, heck, we need to find a way to express ourselves more simply. mjh

TimesDispatch.com | Bush advances his agenda

A day after declaring victory in a hard-fought election, President Bush said at a news conference, “I’ll reach out to everyone who shares our goals,” adding that “I earned capital in this election, and I’m going to spend it.” …

Bush said he felt it was “necessary to move an agenda that I told the American people I would move,” adding: “When you win, there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view.”

Stop the Tape: President Bush Has Learned About The Enemy, Declares: “I Meant What I Said”

See, to them, you have to understand, to many in Washington and the White House press corps, and many in the left in general, you say things to fool people.

You say things to avoid controversy or you say things to actually deceive people. But you never say what you mean. That’s a sign of weakness. That’s giving your intentions away. You don’t do that. You gotta fool people. You gotta lie to ’em. You gotta set ’em up. You gotta deceive ’em, and I think that’s why so many people have trouble understanding Bush.

Democrats must learn from loss By Matthew Miller

There are other lessons. Democrats may simply need to have a governor atop the ticket; a senator may never be marketable as an executive leader. Democrats sure need a good Southerner. But above all, Democrats need ideas.

Think about it. By 2008 we will have had 40 years of GOP presidents broken only by Southern governor Jimmy Carter (a post-Watergate fluke) and Southern governor Bill Clinton (a rare force of nature). During this time American politics have drifted dramatically to the right, to the point where Richard Nixon’s combined plans for universal health coverage and a minimum family income is now far too “liberal” for John Kerry to have supported in 2004.

Showing how progressive goals are consistent with American values, bolstering the party’s security agenda in an age of terror, reframing the language and means with which Democrats propose to solve the problems of ordinary Americans – all this, as with Clinton in 1992, will mean challenging some ancient doctrines and interest groups in order to reach out to more Americans with real answers.

It’s a tall order. And it’s hard to see how the current Democratic establishment – which, after all, has presided over these losses and the rightward drift of the country – is up to the task.

Forty years of Republican presidents and we’re not doing so bad. Much of the world hates us or thinks we’re insane. We’re headed towards bankruptcy. We’re ready to shred the Constitution. There’s a record to run on in 2008! mjh

News > Politics — Faithful say their votes carried day” href=”http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20041104-9999-1n4faith.html”>SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Politics — Faithful say their votes carried day By Sandi Dolbee, UNION-TRIBUNE RELIGION & ETHICS EDITOR

“This is a great victory,” said Cass, who last summer left his East County church to lead the Center for Reclaiming America, a conservative Christian public activism arm of Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

“It really is showing that America is a conservative nation and, unfortunately for those politicians on the other side of those issues, it’s not going to go well for them for a long time,” he said. …

“The religious right is already crowing about providing Bush’s margin of victory,” Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement issued yesterday.

“The movement’s leaders expect to be handsomely rewarded for that,” he added, noting that seats on the U.S. Supreme Court are likely to open up during Bush’s second term. “The culture war may go nuclear.”

Social conservatives score victories, plan more impact by Matt Stearns and Charles Homans, Knight Ridder Newspapers

“This country was based on biblical principles,” said Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America, applauding what she called the “pro-life, pro-family” Election Day victories. “This is a sign of what America used to be, and that we’re going back to where we were.” …

The U.S. Senate tilted sharply right with the election of several new senators, including

• Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions, and

• Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who said pregnant single women should not be allowed to teach in public schools. …

Exit polls indicate that Christian conservatives are a big reason for those wins. About 78 percent of self-described born-again Christians voted for Bush, himself a born-again Christian. A fifth of all voters said moral values were the most important issue in the campaign, and three out of four of those voters went for Bush. …

Look for the judiciary in general and the Supreme Court in particular to be the next battleground where social conservatives flex their muscle, several social conservative leaders said.

“I’ve heard commentators say Bush should pick judges who don’t polarize,” said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America. “Nonsense … The president shouldn’t be cutting any deals with Democrats.”

House GOP says the way is paved for Bush agenda=The Hill.com=
Pence: ‘Dems lost their leader. That speaks spades.’
By Jonathan E. Kaplan

House Republican lawmakers, flush with victory, said President Bush’s reelection, combined with their slightly improved margin in the House and a four-seat gain in the Senate, demonstrates public approval of how they have governed the country the past four years.

”It’s an affirmation of the direction we’ve been going,” said Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (Va.)….

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), new chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said: “There’s a mandate for conservative leadership in the outcome of this election. The American people have spoken in deafening terms that they want
Republican leadership in the White House and Capitol Hill.” …

“It is time for the majority to be heard.” He said he hopes Republicans will focus on changing the budget process, reforming Medicare and Social Security, defining marriage as between a man and woman and banning RU-486, a pharmaceutical used to induce an abortion.

I liked someone’s observation that more people voted against Bush than against any candidate before. That won’t even slow down the raging Right. mjh